FANTAST IN FOCUS: SASHA CHAITOW In a way, Sasha Chaitow is following in the footsteps of the earliest philosophers. Many of them spent their lives in the sun-kissed Greek islands as educators and advisers, developing their theories in the presence of cypress trees and Homer’s famous “wine-dark” sea. Sasha however, has developed a more cosmopolitan…
Zora the Explorer
Earlier this year, National Geographic reported that a team of archaeologists had discovered a legendary city in the remote La Mosquitia Valley of Honduras. The expedition’s ethnobotanist is quoted as saying that the area is “the most undisturbed rain forest in Central America”. Amazingly the ruins—which are still being excavated—point to the existence of a…
The Wizard of Pennsylvania
ODD TRUTHS: THE WIZARD OF PENNSYLVANIA In his poem The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) refers to a “weird” and wizard-like recluse who haunts the Wissahickon woodland: The inspiration for this romantic woodsman-magus was none other than Johannes Kelpius, a Transylvanian theologian and mystic who emigrated from Europe to Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1694 to establish a rural utopian community…
Fantast in Focus: Moon Ribas
FANTAST IN FOCUS: MOON RIBAS Sir Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that any “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. His statement may ring true in the work of Spanish artist Moon Ribas. In a way, Moon’s art is ‘techno-magical’. She creatively utilises cutting-edge gadgetry to explore the latent possibilities of the human senses. Moon is also…
Fantast in Focus: Aliya Whiteley
FANTAST IN FOCUS: ALIYA WHITELEY Aliya Whiteley is an author and librarian. Her new novella from Unsung Stories, The Arrival of the Missives, has just been released and is already making waves. Like her previous novel The Beauty (published in 2014), The Arrival of the Missives is a work of speculative, mind-bending fiction. It’s a seemingly ordinary…
Fantast in Focus: Barry McGlashan
FANTAST IN FOCUS: BARRY MCGLASHAN Reminiscent of the work of Caspar David Friedrich and Frederic Edwin Church, Barry McGlashan’s art is distinguished by its sublimity and profundity. Although Barry was born in Scotland, a country of naturally poetic landforms and history, his paintings have a transcendental quality to them. Often tinted with oneiric colours, they evoke…
Fantasts in Focus: Andy Paciorek and the Folk Horror Revivalists
FANTASTS IN FOCUS: ANDY PACIOREK AND THE FOLK HORROR REVIVALISTS The Folk Horror Revival (FHR) project is taking the world by storm. In just a few years, the movement has spawned numerous works of art and literature and amassed a significant international following. Its 11,000-member (and counting) Facebook group is both an athenaeum and marketplace…
Fantast in Focus: Oska
FANTAST IN FOCUS: OSKA Oska is an illustrator and graphic designer from Montreal, Canada. His futuristic artworks, which feature both atmospheric megastructures and contemplative portrait-like miniatures, are frequently shared on Tumblr and Reddit and have been featured in a number of different places, such as Booooooom and My Modern Met. After seeing his pensive piece “Illusion”, we…
Fantast in Focus: Ivan Cenzi of Bizzarro Bazar
FANTAST IN FOCUS: IVAN CENZI Ivan Cenzi is a kindred spirit. As the curator of the virtual wunderkammer Bizzarro Bazar, he trawls the depths of the human and animal kingdoms to unearth strange, bizarre, and often macabre stories. When he isn’t clambering through ancient catacombs or writing about “invisible” castles, he shares spooky videos like this. One could…
Fantast in Focus: Paul Lewin
FANTAST IN FOCUS: PAUL LEWIN Storytelling is Paul Lewin’s passion. His sources of inspiration are thousand-year-old tales—all of which are linked to the oral traditions and folkways of West Africa. But the vision that Paul depicts in his acrylic artworks is a surreal inter-dimensional realm of past, present, and future, a world which beams up…